PREFACE
THE epistolary matter in the first section of this volume is drawn from material already in print: chiefly from Part I. of The Remains of the Reverend Richard Hurrell Froude, M.A., Fellow of Oriel, published by the Rivingtons in 1838, and, incidentally, from John Henry Newman: Letters and Correspondence to 1845, published by the Longmans in 1890: from one notable work, that is to say, which is wholly forgotten, and from another yet recent, of great and unique interest, which has not yet won its full public appreciation. For the unrestricted use of the desired extracts from these books, the Editor’s grateful thanks are due equally to the representatives of the elder branch of the Froude family, and to Cardinal Newman’s literary executor.
The liberal selection from Hurrell Froude’s Letters which appeared in the Remains is invalidated, to modern curiosity, by manifold suppressions and omissions necessary for private reasons then in force. Some clue, however, is to be found, if it be looked for, towards the identification of those to whom his correspondence was addressed. The Editors of the Remains silently adopted, for the Letters, the same system of differentiation as they had already employed, two years before, in regard to the authorship of the collected poems in Lyra Apostolica: that is to say, in both books γ stands for Keble, δ for Newman, ε for Robert Wilberforce, and ζ for Isaac Williams. As Hurrell Froude’s own contributions to the Lyra had appeared over the signature β, it was easy to surmise that Beta in the Remains might refer to his brothers or sisters, and Alpha, by a sort of primacy, to his father: as is certainly the case. But it was more difficult, for instance, to identify η as Mr. Frederic Rogers, or θ as the Rev. John Frederick Christie: for to these
there was no key but that of internal evidence of an elusive sort. The Greek alphabet, in the Remains, served only as a heading to marshal the recipients of the Letters written by Froude; proper names figuring in the course of the Letters were almost in every instance replaced by a blank. The verification of these names will perhaps be accepted, though not all are based on a manuscript reading;[1] and of course no blank has been filled experimentally without due indication of that process. Nor has effort been made, at any point, to fill out sentences, or gaps of any kind, save those caused by the suppression of proper names. This line of procedure, and, indeed, the entire scheme of the rifacciamento, stands subject first and last to the circumstance that the Editor has had no access to the great mass of dated and classified manuscript correspondence now at Edgbaston. As it was impossible to collate the Froude-Newman Letters with the originals, there appeared something supererogatory in reprinting any of the others in their complete form, or including unpublished addenda most kindly placed at the Editor’s disposal, when an exception had to be ruled in regard to the most interesting and most important material of all. Unfortunately, moreover, Froude’s letters to his father, the Archdeacon, to Robert Wilberforce and to Isaac Williams, have perished; and those to Mr. Keble, if existent, had not been recovered by his grandnephew, the Rev. George C. Keble, at the time when this volume went to press. A few letters have been pieced together by comparison of passages, as they stand in the Remains, and in the Newman Correspondence, issued a half-century later. Examination of the fac-simile page of the amusing letter from Barbados, written on December 26, 1834, and of its counterpart in the text here given, copied from that of the Remains, will show that some de-editing might be called for, under the right conditions, in the matter of Hurrell Froude’s edited correspondence. It will be seen, on the whole, that neither close study nor long acquaintance with the subject could keep
the reprinting, as it pressed forward, from degenerating into more or less of a game of guesswork. Yet exclusions and limitations may cast a befitting half-light upon used literature of long ago, which was in itself elliptical, and tends to create new ellipses, inasmuch as its purpose now is to throw stress less on historic or theological issues than on human character. Many given data, or few, yield pretty much the same residuum when the personality which reigns over them is as rich and strong as Hurrell Froude’s. Says one of the most penetrating of modern writers:
‘The art of biography has accustomed those who read to expect … as the word implies, the portrayal of a life, of a process: the record of the growth and unfolding of a soul and character. This it is which interests the subjective temper of our days…. Our mind has learnt that its choicest food need not be sought from afar, but lies scattered with the wild flowers by the wayside, and that nothing is so extraordinary as the ordinary. Thus we have come to care less for a full inventory of the events which make up a man’s life, or for the striking nature of those events in themselves, than for such a judicious selection and setting of them as shall best bring out and explain that individuality which is our main interest. We care less for what a man does and more for what he is; and it is mainly as a key to what he is that we study the circumstances which act upon him, and the conduct by which he reacts upon them.’[2] A selection and setting to explain individuality: such is the aim, such (it is to be feared) is only very partially the achievement, of this book.
Concerning its second section a few remarks may be called for. That section actually had, from the first, in the Editor’s intention, the right of way. It is quite independent, not called into auxiliary play as a mere illustrative collection of pièces justificatives. Many of these essays and reviews have authority; a few have great literary beauty; the Editor’s work, which could not vie with them, has borrowed almost nothing from them, and thus preserved two integrities. Although limits of space forbade the reproduction of any one chapter of appreciable
length quite in its entirety, yet there existed no reason, but only the whim of artistic choice, for the inclusion or exclusion of one part of any paper at the cost of another part. The process of making excerpts, at best, has something of disagreeableness and of danger. Where that process cannot be avoided, it is well, at least, if its lever be not a preconceived theory. An Editor not of Froude’s own religious communion should scruple all the more to interfere in any wise with the witnesses. Such lines or pages as are here scored out are not inaccessible in their original forms. It will be seen that they are not deleted to favour any special plea, but are either somewhat irrelevant to the subject in hand, or a repetition of facts and impressions more succinctly stated in other accompanying papers. Where aught of moment is involved, the fullest and clearest expression of it is in every case allowed to carry the field: e.g., Dean Church’s apologetics concerning Froude’s so-called ‘Romanising’ will be found more satisfactory to the uneasy than the paler defence in the first Preface to the Remains. A broad selective principle has ruled the Editor also in minor matters: e.g., a poem of Froude’s own, imbedded in the text of an early review by Lord Blachford, or a poem of his great friend’s imbedded in an analysis by Mr. R. H. Hutton, are, though coveted, left where they are, and are not transferred to the main narrative sketch. A slight overlapping, as it were, is inevitable: what is super-serviceable sometimes serves more than one pen. Nothing written in English about Hurrell Froude which has colour and individuality, has been altogether passed by, though the present scheme is not in the least bibliographical. On the whole, there is set forth a richly varied testimony: comment buttressed on comment, sometimes, and contradiction against contradiction. Everything about the man calls for criticism, and gets it: his private examen of conscience, his verses, his letters, his traditional sayings, his ecclesiastical theory and religious practice; everything, in fact, except his dreaded arguments. These are conspicuously let alone by those who disapprove of them. They lurk, however, beyond the borders of parley, and they constitute the aggressiveness of one, who but for insistence on them, and whatever they imply, was essentially courteous and gentle. By his commentators
he is incessantly quoted: the ‘party of the second part,’ whoever may be writing, successfully holds the stage. It is always instructive to watch reflections of so simple and boyish, yet powerful a personality, on the complex surface of literary interpretation. We count Hurrell Froude’s a long-forgotten name; yet during the sixty-eight years since he died, more serious students than would seem at first thought likely, have felt for this fighting recluse true attraction, or the equally legitimate attraction of repulsion; and their number bids fair to increase.
‘Even as a broken mirror, which the glass